(1)The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs (5)Metroid Prime 2015
Results Round Three Wednesday, December 2, 2015 Ulti's Analysis Some people will blame rally spillover for why Metroid Prime took the early lead in this match, but I think it's a lot more simpler than that. Metroid Prime is really strong early in polls, and Skyrim was never quite on the world-beating level a lot of us Skyrim fans were hoping for. That's why we all picked it to lose to Mario 64 in our brackets. The rally spillover did clearly help with vote totals though, which is always awesome! Metroid Prime's trends, and really Metroid in general, are very well-known by now. Wreck shop in the first hour, bleed percentage overnight, and then totally collapse during the day vote. Those ugly trends tend to cost Metroid sooner or later in every contest, and in this contest those trends cost the Metroid series not one, but two major upsets. The Skyrim loss wasn't so bad, but it was Super Metroid's loss to Majora's Mask later on in this round that really stung. Early on in this poll, Metroid Prime was flying high and really looked like it would ride to a rather simple 52-48 win. It built up a 400 vote lead an hour in, and though it slowed down a little bit after that, Prime was still able to go up a little bit more overnight. The lead would ultimately peak at 455 before both games started going 50-50. As we got closer and closer to the dead zone, Skyrim began to slowly pick up steam. It would get the lead below 300 just before 6 am, and we know how Metroid Prime is during the morning and day vote. True to form, Metroid completely fell apart once the morning vote hit. There was minor resistance, but Skyrim was able to catch up at 8:50 am. There was a stall by Prime once this happened, but it was ultimately helpless to stop Skyrim from passing it by as we got farther and farther into the day vote. There was a lot of stalling by Prime even as Skyrim slowly trended upwards, and any hope Prime had of coming back faded when the ASV decidedly favored Skyrim. Skyrim would end things with a 734 vote win, which makes for a respectable 1200 vote turnaround. Without the presence of rallies and only relying on trends, that's pretty impressive. Granted it meant Skyrim was doomed against Mario 64, but we all knew that anyway. For Metroid Prime, it was the same old story. It got stuck against Wind Waker in round 2 in 2004, the day vote plus Paper Mario caused it to lose in round 1 in 2009, it almost lost to Half-Life 2 in Game of the Decade because of having a day match, it did lose to Fallout 3 for the same reason, and now this. Poor Metroid Prime just cannot catch a break. Ctes' Analysis This match was semi-hyped leading up to the contest. While Skyrim was a huge favorite before we began, NostalgiaFAQs and previous rounds including rally spillover of previous rounds pointed towards Metroid Prime having a very good chance today. Truthfully, Metroid Prime started out dominating the match full worse with the use of the late Undertale supporters along with the generally great Nintendo Power Hour. Within 5 minutes, it was 85 votes ahead and it continued with insane vote gains twice more. Then Skyrim cut 9 votes, leading most people to believe that what Metroid Prime had was simply spillover and that Skyrim would slowly come back for an easy win. But when Metroid Prime then increased its lead again with each update, we knew we had a match. The cut seemed to slow Metroid Prime at first, but then it got its game back and went up well above 300 close to 400. The vote difference would stay around this for the next couple of hours for the best part of the match. At first, Metroid Prime struggled to actually get above 400 before barely accomplishing it in a great update only to throw it away again the next. The two would then go back and forward a bit, making you think that spillover was about to end and Skyrim would go strong now, but then Metroid Prime stepped its game up, got above 400 and actually stayed there. With a small bump on the road it got all the way up to 455 even. But then it nosedived back down again giving only one update of an attempt to stay above 400. It stayed right below 400 for a while, until Skyrim took it well below only for Metroid Prime to get above again. Had they been this even at a smaller vote difference people would've gone insane. Metroid Prime went below 400 for a single update more until it seemingly cemented itself above it. It lasted two hours only though, then Skyrim started cutting the lead down for real. It was serious now. It probably has a bit to do with the rally spillover that Metroid Prime took the lead by storm, but I don't think it can be entirely contributed to only that. Not when it took Skyrim this long to fight back for real. The board was still suffering from too many Undertale rally topics right now, but I think what made Metroid Prime lose its hold was the dead hours arriving. It's historically a bad time for Nintendo games and Skyrim is just the kind of game that benefits from Europe being the main source of votes. Skyrim was cutting at a decent pace all the down below a 200 vote lead in Metroid Prime's favor. Then it seemed like America woke up to take the match by storm, when Metroid Prime randomly got a huge lead increase. Skyrim took it all back the next update and kept going. Metroid Prime would put up a great fight trying to maintain a +100 vote lead, which it did manage for a while, but when it won updates, they were never really that big, so they couldn't keep up with the huge cuts Skyrim occasionally made. After a full hour, it lost its +100 vote lead for good and continued falling. Skyrim struggled a bit some updates, but on other updates it cut huge, eventually cutting all the way down to an epic tie with 13300 votes each at the 8:50 mark. Skyrim then took the lead and tried to build something, but it wasn't allowed to. After having the lead for half an hour, Metroid Prime took it back with a 3 vote lead, then a single vote lead in another intense update. This would unfortunately be the final time Metroid Prime had the lead, Skyrim started slow at first, but never truly looked back again, actually managing to achieve a three-digit lead in 45 minutes that it would keep for the rest of the match, except for one 98 vote lead update a while later, but that barely matters. Metroid Prime never stopped cutting in pity attempt to fight back, but the match was essentially over from this point forward. Overall, the match provided a good amount of entertaining that was unfortunately overshadowed by another Undertale rally explosion from the day before. Metroid Prime is a strong force in these contests now and ultimately saw a similar run this contest as it did in Game of the Decade. Beating Half-Life 2 and then moving on to lose to the strongest Bethesda game of the contest. Metroid Prime looked more impressive this time, as it destroyed Half-Life 2 and came closer to winning the Bethesda match this time despite higher votals, but ultimately fell just short again. That said, I don't think Metroid Prime is stronger, but actually pretty much the same. It's the other games that changed. Half-Life 2 surely fell in strength here and its Bethesda opponent was not as strong. Don't misunderstand, I do believe Skyrim is stronger than Fallout 3, but I believe 2010 Fallout 3 is stronger than both are now. It makes sense considering everything we've seen so far in this contest. Skyrim managed to get to the point it was predicted to get despite everything it had against it in rally spillover and NostalgiaFAQs, but it was obvious it wasn't going to stand a single chance against Super Mario 64. That match was going to be painful for Skyrim fans. That said, I fully believe Skyrim to be the strongest game from this decade on this site. Of course, if we do get another Game of the Decade contest, it might struggle with something like Smash 4 or a rallied game, but as of now, it's definitely the strongest before outside forces are counted. External Links * Match Updates * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2015 Contest Matches